Presently a great deal of footage from old black & white movies is available. However, much of this footage is relatively unmarketable because of the starkness and plainess of black & white images as compared to color images. This is particularly true in view of the fact that color has permeated not only the motion picture field but also the secondary market of television where old black & white firm simply does not have the appeal of a competing color telecast.
In an attempt to solve some of these problems, numerous techniques have evolved. For example, the movie may be reprinted on color film with a sepia color, or other attractive color. The color for various scenes may even be varied depending upon the contents of scenes, the lighting level and the like. Thus blue might be used for a night scene, sepia for an indoor scene and green in a park like setting.
In an attempt to get a mixture of coloration on black & white television shows, products have even been marketed which comprise a thin transparent plastic film which is adhered to a television screen and which contain several stripes of color, for example, a blue region at the top presumably coloring the sky, a green region on the bottom, corresponding to foliage, and a brown region in the center corresponding to the various characters in the scene. However none of the above systems are capable of individually providing the various elements in the picture with realistic colors.
The alternative to this type of colorization is individual coloring of each frame of the movie. Naturally, this is a manual operation and, involves the colorization of a great number of frames and accordingly a relatively great expense.